Plot
A group of student outcasts plot to avenge their years of
bullying and humiliation at the hands of their more popular school peers. At an
abandoned house where the class are throwing a party, the outcasts plan a night
of torture and abuse which will leave their tormentors scarred both physically
and emotionally.
Review
A rather puzzling affair which
drifts from Hostel mode to something a little more traditionally slasher
like Prom Night, The Final
takes your standard high school bullying story to new gross-out levels. Teen
audiences across the world would be able to associate somewhat with these kids
as everyone would surely know of someone who was victim to bullying during their
school years. What if those outcasts and misfits had been plotting their
revenge? It's happened in real life with the likes of the Columbine shootings
but now it's time for an inevitable torture porn spin on the story.
The set up itself is nothing new and borrows it's main story not just from
high school horror film lore but almost any film set inside an American high
school or college. The geeks, the misfits and the perennial underdogs manage to
endure suffering at the hands of intellectually inferior individuals who treat
them with contempt and jealousy because they're "different." It doesn't matter
whether it's Massacre at Central High, an episode of Saved By The Bell
or Revenge of the Nerds - the outcasts always manage to get one over in
some form. It's just that in the horror genre, "getting one over" usually means
beheading, disembowelling or in this film's case, death by cattle prod or acidic
face cream. Like it's fellow high school horror brothers, The Final
spends a little time in presenting the bullies as a truly despicable lot
although it goes down the easier route of having them do generic "high school
hi-jinks" to the nerds. It's hardly deep emotional drama when someone gets
a milk carton thrown at them but it gets the job done effectively in the short
time frame.
The morality speeches that the outcasts deliver with their deep, sinister and
profoundly Shakespearian delivery is more akin to Jigsaw's monotonous rants in
the Saw series. Voice changers aside, the rants are a little long-winded
at times and you'd wish they'd just shut up and start torturing someone. Put up
or shut up! The
Final is that it promises to go far in delivering brutality but it just
doesn't go far enough. I'm sorry to sound so bloodthirsty but the set-up all
points towards a frenzied montage of torture and torment and what we get in the
end is rather lacklustre and surprisingly blood-free. The camera tends to keep
well clear of the close-ups so you'll see events but from a distance. It's
nothing you won't have seen done worse in Hostel or Saw or one of
the many more "adult" themed torture porn flicks either. Inevitably, The
Final's biggest problem is that there's no one to root for because of the
story we're presented with. We can't root for the outcasts because they're
committing horrific crimes and are a depressing, miserable bunch of assholes
anyway. We can't root for the jocks and cheerleaders because they've been
bullying and harassing the outcasts for years without provocation and are
equally as detestable. So the audience is just left caught between two worlds,
wanting to root for everyone and no one at the same time. At least the costume
choices of the avenging bullies are rather sinister and unique as they each
dress up like horror characters, in particular the sinister lead teen with his
gas mask outfit.
Verdict
It's rather light on
torture, heavy on dull monologues and full of potential which never really gets
chance to shine. The Final never really gets going from it's
Jigsaw-wannabes in training motifs into anything remotely serious or engaging.
It's well made and such but lacks any emotional investment with the characters
whatsoever.
